Relationships between people and possibly

between countries: exploration through

modeling
J. S.
September 27, 2015
In 1988, Steven Strogatz wrote a short section in the Mathematics Magazine suggesting to model the time evolution of a love affair between two
people by a system of two coupled differential equations. Many people have
since studied and developed this modeling idea even drawing a strong correlation to relationships between countries. Although I dont know how valid
this is, Hannah Fry says in her TED talk, A mathematical equation that
can accurately determine whether a married couple will divorce with a 90%
success rate is almost completely identical to one that can accurately describe the relationship between countries and whether they will go to war at
a very similar rate. The simple model I study for human relationships is a
discrete mathematics approach drawn from Strogatzs differential equation
suggestion bearing in mind that it may strongly represent country relationships too. The love model is more sensitive and unexpected than I thought
it was given its simplicity.
Say our two lovers are Romeo and Juliet. Their feeling for each other in
general will not be constant through time. It is dynamic. Let Rn R be
Romeos love/hate for Juliet and let Jn R be Juliets love/hate for Romeo
on day n N. When Rn > 0 Romeo loves Juliet, when Rn < 0 Romeo hates
Juliet, and when Rn = 0 Romeo is neutral towards Juliet. |Rn | is a measure
of the strength of Romeos feeling of love/hate for Juliet. The same applies
for Jn from Juliets perspective.

Assume that Romeo and Juliet respond linearly to their own feeling. This
means for some aR R and aJ R that measure the respective magnitude
of their response we can write,
Rn+1 = aR Rn
Jn+1 = aJ Jn
Given that they meet on day n0 N, aR and aJ determine how strongly
Romeo and Juliet will love/hate each other on day n0 + 1 based on their
own initial feeling on day n0 . The feeling on day n0 + 2 will be the same
coefficient aR /aJ times the feeling on day n0 + 1. Thus the two formulas
above are a general representation of this, recursive formulas. Now we want
to think about how one responds to the others feeling for them and modify
the recursive formulas. In a similar manner, assume that both Romeo and
Juliet respond linearly to the others feeling for them. For some pR R
and pJ R that measure the respective magnitude of their response to the
others feeling,

Rn+1 = aR Rn + pR Jn
Jn+1 = aJ Jn + pJ Rn
A number of romantic styles arise depending on the sign of the four
coefficients aR , aJ , pR , and pJ , their magnitude, and whether or not they lie
between 0 and 1. As this was a convenient way to depict and analyze the
drastic difference in romantic styles, I made the following plots using python
(programming language). They illustrate different trajectories of Romeo and
Juliets love affair. Each graph is plotted for 100 days assuming they meet
on day 1 (n0 = 1). I also assume that they have the same standard initial
feeling Rn = 1, and Jn = 1 in all cases so that each graph starts at the same
position. The circles represent days and a circles color changes from one day
to another to show the developing mood of the relationship.

Figure 1: Converges

Figure 2: Diverges

In Figure 1, aR = 0.5, aJ = 0.7, pR = 0.2, and pJ = 0.5. Both Romeo

and Juliet respond positively to their own feeling and the others. Juliet
responds a little more but they are both cautious/tentative. Juliets feeling
for Romeo initially increases a bit but both become neutral as days go by.
They converge to equilibrium as represented by clustered days at (0, 0).
In Figure 2, aR = 1.1, aJ = 1.0, pR = 1.0, and pJ = 1.0. Romeo responds
a little more positively to his own feeling but everything is uniform otherwise.
The relationship never reaches equilibrium as can be seen by widening of
the gap between days but their feelings uniformly become more and more
positive.

Figure 3: Spiral

Figure 4: Spiral

In Figure 3, aR = 1.1, aJ = 1.1, pR = 1.1, and pJ = 3.0. Romeo responds negatively to Juliets feeling and Juliet responds positively to Romeos
feeling and with greater magnitude. Because she responds positively to whatever Romeo is feeling for her, if Romeos feeling is negative her response will
also be negative. This results in a relationship that goes from hot to cold in a
predictable very symmetric way and always spiralling out. It becomes more
passionate and dangerous as days pass by. A similar love spiral is Figure 4,
aR = 1.1, aJ = 1.0, pR = 0.7, and pJ = 0.5. They go from green, to blue,
purple, yellow to orange and back to green but more and more heightened.

Figure 5: Converges

Figure 6: Converges then diverges

In Figure 5, an equilibrium is achieved in the relationship as can be seen

by converging days but it is at the expense of Juliet. aR = 0.5, aJ = 0.8,
pR = 0.2, and pJ = 0.5. The coefficients are almost identical to those of
Figure 1 except aJ is 0.7 instead of 0.8. This slight difference changes things
drastically. How can Juliet turn things in her favor? With every coefficient
kept constant, if she slightly increases her own feeling reaction, 0.8 to 0.813
we get Figure 6. Things turn unfavorable for her only temporarily. The love
affair eventually turns positive for both and increases uniformly but never
quite reaches equilibrium. Other interesting visually surprising trajectories
result from further changing the coefficients.

References
[1] Gerda de Vries A Course in Mathematical Biology. 2006, p. 36-38.
[2] Steven Strogatz Love Affairs and Differential Equations. February 1988,
VOL. 61, NO. 1.